This field investigation led Douglas on to other studies in what she called "social accountability" and "classification schemes" of human relations, applied equally to "primitive" societies (pre-industrial, pre-modern) and to modern industrial society. She wrote books on a variety of subjects including pollution, the consumer society, and religion.
The anthropology of Douglas was derived partly from the work of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917). Douglas rejected his determinism, but accepted what Durkheim realized: the social basis for human thought. She used the Durkheimian method of drawing on "primitive" cultures to illuminate problems in modern society. For Douglas, rituals dramatize moral order in the human universe. "Culture" is rooted in daily social relations: the most mundane and concrete things of daily life. From childhood on, the drama of life is constructed: the self concept; the linguistic code, which the individual learns as a child; the individual as a moral actor; the collective nature of human existence. Comparative studies have to be made of such things as dirt and pollution, food and meals, the biological body, speech, jokes, and material possessions. The biological body is a perfect metaphor or symbol for the social body or the tribe or nation.
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